I haven’t posted in a while because I haven’t doing much. My initial approach to learning the Heisig Method was a little too high stress, and I didn’t realize it. I went traveling for a few weeks and came back to Japan refreshed with a different mindset on the language. Luckily, after doing some Mnemosyne and Anki reviews, I haven’t forgotten most of what I’ve studied. But taking 3 weeks off doing your Heisig = losing a possible 500 Kanji.

But as a part of my new approach, I have no judgements. My revised goal is to learn all the kanji within the next 8 weeks, tracking my progress as I go along. Even though I haven’t learned much new Kanji. I am able to make great inferences, and mix my Japanese dialogue skills with reading. So I’m actually fascinated by how comfortable I feel now. the fact is, if you follow this system, and you are able to recognize in reading most of the Kanji you see, then when you start praciticing sentences along with your immersion process, your output must increase.

Me saying 楽しかた? and seeing it now are the same thing.

あなたわバカだよ。

すばらし！

These are very simple and easy statements, but I can read them easily. As time progresses I am already comfortable with the knowledge that reading Japanese isn’t a matter of how, but when. The faster I hit the 2,045 the better. My earlier motivation hurdles were definitely influenced by overwork, a touch of latent culture shock and other things. If you cruise with it, and make it fun, it gets better. I’m still at 450 Kanji now, but the plan is 250 Kanji per week until I hit the target, then onto sentence mining.

I’m going to purhcase Independence Day, Contact and The Matrix in Japanese to help with my immersion since I pretty much know those movies by heart. I think I’ll also try and find some Disney classics dubbed in Japanese to watch. I still haven’t found the best mix of Japanese music to listen to, but as i figure that out, I will post information. Now I must run, have Kanji to learn!